13 Ix
White Cosmic
Wizard
Down from the North
Drifts a Shaman’s
Song –
A Melody ancient
Full of Magic –
Words of Love
From the far white
North
Where Land, Sea, Sky
are One –
An endless expanse
Where Absolute
consumes Relative –
Here lives the
Cosmic Wizard
The Healing Shaman –
wise One
Born between the Worlds
S/he sings and
dances
To the traveling
Drum
S/he senses all
things
Through deep
Intuition
S/he heals every
illness
With Skill hard-won
Human suffering of
every kind
The Shaman knows
The Joy and Pain of Mother
Earth
S/he feels from Birth.
©Kleomichele Leeds
Susie Taylor
Susie King Taylor (August 6, 1848 – October 6, 1912) was the first Black Army nurse. She tended to an all Black army troop named the 1st South Carolina Volunteers (Union), later re-designated the 33rd United States Colored Infantry Regiment, where her husband served, for four years during the Civil War. Despite her service, like many African-American nurses, she was never paid for her work. As the author of Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops, Late 1st S.C. Volunteers, she was the only African-American woman to publish a memoir of her wartime experiences. She was also the first African American to teach openly in a school for former slaves in Georgia. At this school in Savannah, Georgia, she taught children during the day and adults at night. She is in the 2018 class of inductees of the Georgia Women of Achievement.
Biography
Susie King Taylor was born a slave at a plantation in Liberty County, Georgia, on August 6, 1848, as Susan Ann Baker. When she was about seven years old, her owner allowed her to go to Savannah to live with her grandmother, Dolly. Taylor's admiration for women may have stemmed from her close relationship with Dolly. Despite Georgia's harsh laws against the formal education of African Americans, Dolly, with whom Taylor lived for much of her childhood, supported Taylor's education by sending her to an illegal school run by a free African-American woman, Mrs. Woodhouse. After learning all she could from Mrs. Woodhouse, Taylor continued her education under the tutelage of various "teachers", both white and black, including playmates, and the son of her grandmother's landlord. From them she gained the rudiments of literacy, then extended her education with the help of two white youths, both of whom knowingly violated law and custom. Her education ended when she was forced to return to her mother on the Isle of Wight after Dolly was arrested at a suburban church meeting for singing freedom hymns. Taylor had to move back with her mother in Fort Pulaski but the Union took the fort not long afterward. Taylor fled with her uncle and his family to St. Catherine's Island, where they received Union protection and a transfer to St. Simon's Island. Taylor impressed the commanding officers with her ability to read and write and was offered a position running a school for children and adults on the island.
In April 1862, Susie Baker and many other African Americans fled to St. Simon's Island, occupied at the time by Union forces. Within days her educational advantages came to the attention of army officers, who offered to obtain books for her if she would organize a school. She thereby became the first black teacher for freed African-American students to work in a freely operating freed men's school in Georgia. She taught 40 children in day school and "a number of adults who came to me nights, all of them so eager to learn to read, to read above anything else." She taught there until October 1862, when the island was evacuated.
While at the school on St. Simon's Island, Baker married Edward King, a black non-commissioned officer in the First South Carolina Volunteers of African Descent (later re-flagged as 33rd United States Colored Troops February 8, 1864, which was disbanded at Fort Wagner in 1866). For three years she moved with her husband's and brothers' regiment, serving as nurse and laundress, and teaching many of the black soldiers to read and write during their off-duty hours. In 1866 she and Edward returned to Savannah, where she established a school for the freed children. Edward King died in September 1866, a few months before the birth of their first child. There are few details about his death but scholars have noted that he died in a work-related accident at the pier unloading ships. Also around this time Taylor was forced to close her school when a free school opened nearby. In 1867 she returned to her native Liberty County to establish another school. In 1868 she again relocated to Savannah, where she continued teaching freedmen for another year and supported herself through small tuition charges, never receiving aid from the northern freed men's aid organizations. Historians say she,Taylor enrolled as a laundress at a camp named "Camp Saxton," The first suits the people wore were red coats and pants.
In the 1870's King traveled to Boston as a domestic servant of a wealthy white family. While there she met Russell L. Taylor, also a native of Georgia. She returned home to Liberty County to marry Taylor on April 20, 1879. She remained in Boston for the rest of her life, returning to the South only occasionally. Taylor still kept in contact with her fellow veterans' group, the Grand Army of the Republic. After a trip to Louisiana in the 1890's to care for a dying son, she wrote her Reminiscences, which were privately published in 1902. She died 10 years later. She is buried next to her second husband at Mount Hope Cemetery in Roslindale, Massachusetts.*
IX
Kin 234: White Cosmic Wizard
I endure in order to enchant
Transcending receptivity
I seal the output of timelessness
With the cosmic tone of presence
I am guided by the power of endlessness.
It is only when the light appears that we realize we have been living in a world of shadows.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2018-2019.
The Sacred Tzolk'in
Ajna Chakra (Gamma Plasma)
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